Editor's note: The author, Dr. Mark Bookman, passed away unexpectedly on December 22, 2022. At that time, his manuscript had already been accepted for publication. We thank Carolyn S. Stevens and Paul Bookman for their help finalizing this article and furthering Mark's legacy. Mark was a member of the SDS Board of Directors.

In her book Disability in Japan, Carolyn S. Stevens analyzed data collected during seven trips to Tokyo with her physically and cognitively disabled daughter between 2000 and 2006 to reveal how "the growing number of accessibility features in Japanese public spaces has not necessarily resulted in a 'barrier-free' society." 1 Stevens identified how many accessibility problems are rooted in overpopulation. Exploring ramps, curb-cuts, and elevators as examples, Stevens suggested that physically disabled individuals in Japan are usually required to share barrier-free features with other users: wheelchair-accessible pathways are frequently overtaken by bicyclists, and lifts are often used by a variety of people: older people, shoppers and parents with strollers, for example. Even when barrier-free features are exclusively reserved for physically disabled individuals, they are rarely able to use them without expending extra time and energy, especially in areas with heavy traffic. At train stations, for instance, wheelchair users must wait for extended periods of time for staff to prepare ramps and offer assistance with boarding and disembarking. Stevens argued that displacing barrier-free features to areas of lesser traffic may fix the problem of multiple users but would marginalize physically and cognitively disabled people by making them go out of their way (and out of mainstream view) for accessibility.

Stevens has offered a valuable synchronic analysis of accessibility for some communities of physically and cognitively disabled people in Japan. And Stevens is not alone in that regard: scholars such as Fukushima Satoshi and Nakamura Kenryu 2 have published similarly useful synchronic analyses. 3 To further explain why Japan's built environment has come to exist in the form that it has and who it privileges with accessibility, I perform a diachronic analysis in this article that considers the classical historiographical questions of complexity, contingency, causality, and change over time. By examining newspapers, magazines, state records, and documents from disability organizations, I demonstrate how activists have shaped Japan's built environment by localizing ideas born out of international advocacy, reinterpreting them in light of domestic conditions, and then using them to pressure policy makers to develop barrier-free facilities and enact principles of Universal Design. My study traces the activism of Japan's Independent Living Movement from 1981 to 2006 and considers the consequences for some subcommunities of physically disabled people. I also argue that to understand disability in Japan, we must include the study of disability in other cultural contexts. 4 By unraveling the politics of accessibility in Japan's present, my study offers advice to academics interested in making descriptive and prescriptive interventions about accessibility in other settings.

Overview

As an implementation of Universal Design in this paper, I provide an outline of my analysis in this section. First, a brief examination of the UN International Year of Disabled Persons in 1981 illustrates how Japanese disability activists established relationships with leaders of the American Disability Rights Movement. Those relationships led Japanese activists overseas and American activists to Japan, facilitating exchanges about Independent Living Centers (ILCs) as a solution to various accessibility issues. Although Masako Okuhira and Reiko Hayashi attribute the founding of Japan's first ILC in 1986 to a few disability activists who were "motivated by the stories of US advocates […] to go to the United States and study at centers for Independent Living," its creation does not seem that simple. 5 Japanese activists did learn from their American colleagues, but they also recognized that ILCs could not be imported to Japan without significant modifications to the nation's disability welfare systems. Overlooking how activists combined domestic policies with international insights when establishing ILCs in Japan, Okuhira and Hayashi present an incomplete image of Japanese ILCs that does not explain why ILCs spread across the country and consolidated into a national network. My research helps fill in this picture by identifying how the emergence of ILCs in Japan paradoxically created not only accessibility, but also barriers for some physically disabled people.

ILCs allowed many physically disabled people in Japan to leave their families' houses and institutions and pursue lives as independent adults. Having broken one barrier to community integration, some of those individuals ventured out into society, only to encounter additional barriers in the form of inaccessible buildings and transportation. To overcome such barriers, a small handful of activists organized research conferences and large-scale protests throughout the late 1980s, which facilitated the development of an Independent Living Movement. Members of that movement took advantage of global pressures connected to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and local concerns about Japan's aging population to lobby for regional barrier-free regulations in the early 1990s, which were eventually nationalized under the Heart Building Law (Hāto biru hō) of 1994. By tracing the trajectory of their activism, I expand on the work of Katharina Heyer, who has described the law as "the official response to the UN mandate for social integration and barrier-free access." 6

The passage of the Heart Building Law, like the development of ILCs during the late 1980s, permitted some physically disabled people to pursue Independent Living in their communities by regulating access to markets, department stores, government offices, and other large-scale facilities. As individuals explored those facilities they faced additional barriers, leading to another wave of ILC expansion in the mid-1990s. Powered by newly developed communications technologies such as internet chatrooms and e-mail, ILCs helped to coordinate the activities of Japan's Independent Living Movement and pressure government officials into passing the Barrier-Free Transportation Law of 2000, which made access to public transit a requirement for the first time in Japan's history and promoted an agenda of Universal Design. However, economic challenges and other difficulties with implementation meant that facilities for "everyone" were few and far between, and physically disabled people who used barrier-free features often had to compete for resources with other users. By the time that the New Barrier Free Law was introduced in 2006, activists had already started to debate the politics of Universal Design. Contextualizing those debates and their consequences, I identify avenues for future exploration for scholars of Disability Studies and related disciplines.

The United Nations and the International Year of Disabled Persons

Between June 3–8, 1974, the United Nations hosted an expert meeting of welfare specialists from the United States, Argentina, Spain, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Sweden, and Japan to "analyze the architectural barriers as well as their social implications affecting the lives of handicapped persons in their normal daily activities and to propose what measures may be needed for eliminating these barriers." 7 Through group discussion, meeting participants identified how multiple subcommunities of disabled individuals in different cultural contexts grappled with similar accessibility issues associated with buildings, facilities, housing, and transportation. 8 They concluded that the creation of legislation concerning environmental barriers was a necessary first step to preventing "unnecessary discrimination" of disabled people and protecting their "right to access." They also concluded that such legislation must be implemented through "co-operation of government and private leaders." 9 To promote "barrier-free" policies, participants at the meeting submitted a list of recommendations to the UN General Assembly and several other relevant bodies, which helped shape the UN Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons on December 9, 1975. 10

As a resolution from the UN General Assembly, the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons was not binding on member nations. However, it did establish a framework that legislators could draw on to develop disability-related policies at regional, national, and international levels. Among the Declaration's thirteen proclamations for disabled people were the rights to: 1) respect for their dignity as human beings; 2) protection against discrimination, exploitation, and abuse; 3) measures designed to enable self-reliance; 4) medical, psychological and functional treatment; and 5) economic and social security, including opportunities to secure and retain employment. Aware that many nations could only devote limited resources to the realization of the Declaration's ideals at the time of its resolution, the General Assembly called for the creation of a global plan of action in 1976. As a first step, the General Assembly announced that 1981 would be the International Year of Disabled Persons (IYDP) and laid out a series of goals such as increasing awareness of disability issues, equalizing opportunities, promoting rehabilitation, and preventing impairment. 11 The announcement of the IYDP put significant international pressure on the UN's member nations, creating opportunities for activists and government officials to implement domestic policy changes.

In Japan, the IYDP was first taken up by the Central Council on Policies for Physically and Mentally Disabled Persons (Chūō shinshin shōgaisha taisaku kyōgikai), a government agency charged with coordinating conversations about disability across administrative departments. The council started to facilitate exchanges about the IYDP shortly after its announcement but did not formally adopt the event as part of its agenda until an assembly meeting on December 17, 1978. At its next assembly meeting on March 17, 1980, the council declared itself to be the most suitable agency within the government to lead a national commission for organizing activities tied to the IYDP. 12 As the UN recommended that such commissions include not only government officials but also volunteers from the public and private sector, disabled individuals, and groups operating on their behalf, the council established a Special Committee on the IYDP (Kokusai shōgaisha nen tokubetsu iinkai). However, the Special Committee's makeup did not reflect the IYDP's theme of "full participation and equality," with only fifteen of sixty members identifying as disabled. As activist Ōsuga Ikuo explained in a 1981 issue of Rehabilitation magazine, the exclusion of disabled people from the committee allowed majority members to promote paternalistic policies and turn the "International Year of Disabled Persons" into the "International Year for Disabled Persons." 13

Between March and August of 1980, the Special Committee on the IYDP investigated the feasibility of enacting new projects related to disability during the following year. It reported its findings to a Headquarters for the Promotion of the IYDP (Kokusai shōgaisha nen suishin honbu), which was set up by the Cabinet Office in April with Prime Minister Suzuki Zenkō as its head. 14 On August 12, the Special Committee announced its plans to the public. The committee proposed that Japan host a series of commemorative events throughout the year like international disability sports meetings, vocational competitions, lectures, rehabilitation seminars, and craft exhibitions. The committee also suggested that December 9 be designated as "Physically Handicapped Day" (Shōgaisha no hi) in Japan and that comprehensive welfare centers be built in various prefectures. 15 After receiving the committee's recommendations, the national government set aside a sum of 1.34 trillion yen, approximately three percent of the national budget for 1980, for projects related to the IYDP. Local governments also devoted significant resources to the IYDP, with officials estimating that total government expenditure for the year would exceed three trillion yen (around 1.2% of Japan's Gross National Product). By contrast, Japan's national defense budget for the same year was only 0.9% of its Gross National Product. 16 Despite promises of lavish spending, many organizations of disabled people were dissatisfied with the event-centered plans laid out by the government as they did not address gaps in welfare coverage that contributed to institutionalization during the 1970s. 17

As the government finalized its plans for the IYDP in early August, organizations like the Japanese Council for International Year of Disabled Persons (Kokusai shōgaisha nen nihon suishin kyōgikai), a national network consisting of sixty-seven associations concerned with disability welfare issues, demanded that authorities increase the budget and pursue practical legal reforms for disabled individuals. 18 The council's demands were later echoed by other activist groups like the cerebral palsy focused Green Grass Society (Aoi shiba no kai), whose members argued that the projects proposed by the government failed to comply with the demands of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons. 19 On October 20, dozens of members of the Green Grass Society met with representatives from the Headquarters for the Promotion of the IYDP, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and other official agencies to express their concerns. 20 They argued that the government must develop new laws and policies to: 1) establish economic security for disabled people; 2) eliminate discrimination in education and employment; and 3) eradicate eugenic thought that sought to remove disabled people from society. Failure to do so, the society members asserted, was to jeopardize the long-term impact of the IYDP in Japan. Despite their protests, government officials ultimately favored large-scale events designed to attract media attention over legal reform.

Angered by the government's event-based approach to the IYDP, many disability activists continued to carry out demonstrations throughout the following year. Some criticized the efficacy large-scale events in newspapers by citing public opinion polls carried out by the Prime Minister's office, which revealed that more than eighty percent of Japanese people were unfamiliar with the IYDP. 21 Others argued that large-scale events generated some awareness about disability issues but did little to resolve them. As activist Hanada Shunchō explained in a 1982 retrospective on the IYDP:

The IYDP had events and flashy coverage of problems, but how have the actual lives of disabled people at the individual level changed by comparison? There's been no change at all. The disability welfare pension remains lower than the national pension and cannot be used to support daily activities as a kind of social security. Likewise, the built environment has not changed. Transportation is particularly problematic, as almost all of the national and private railways, as well as other modes of urban transportation, are off-limits to disabled people. […] One can't help but view the IYDP in Japan as a simple celebration. 22

Many members of the general public seem to have agreed with Hanada's assessment, as evidenced by a survey conducted by the Prime Minister's office at the end of the IYDP in December of 1981. According to that survey, eighty-four percent of respondents felt that "public services [for disabled people] are insufficient and there is a need to improve them." 23 Press outlets also condemned the IYDP as a failure with headlines such as "Int'l Year of Disabled Persons Ends with Few Tangible Results." 24 And yet, the IYDP was not a complete loss for Japan. Precisely because of its problems, Japanese activists and welfare experts found reasons to reconsider the purpose of domestic disability policy.

Localizing Independent Living in Japan

Influenced by technologies and concepts circulated by foreign advocates during the IYDP, Japanese activists and welfare experts started to develop new systemic solutions to the problem of disability policy in the 1980s. Perhaps the most important tool at their disposal was the philosophy and practice of "Independent Living" (Jiritsu seikatsu). Having originated from an outgrowth of the American Disability Rights Movement during the late 1960s and 1970s, Independent Living had already caught the attention of some people in Japan before the IYDP. In 1979, Ed Roberts, a quadriplegic respirator-user from the United States whose activism later earned him the nickname "father of the Independent Living Movement," traveled to Japan to give a lecture about disability empowerment. At around the same time, magazines like Rehabilitation Gazette, which spoke to issues faced by disabled Americans in their daily lives, began to be translated into Japanese. 25 Such lectures and publications cultivated a specialist audience of individuals in the accessibility sphere, but their influence was relatively small. During the IYDP, interest in Independent Living grew as new venues for exchange emerged. Throughout the year, American activists traveled to Japan to take part in commemorative events and vice versa. Each trip allowed the activists to share materials from their respective countries. At the same time, heightened media coverage of disability issues helped facilitate the formation of advocacy networks like Disabled Peoples' International (DPI). 26 Through such networks and exchanges, many Japanese activists became aware of the concept of Independent Living. By tracing how they localized and redeployed that concept, I frame the rise of Japanese Independent Living Centers and transnational communities that enabled policy reform.

In a special issue of Rehabilitation Magazine (Rihabiritēshon) published in March of 1981, Okuno Eiko of the National Rehabilitation Center for Physically Disabled Persons asked: "What is necessary for people to live meaningful lives as human beings if they cannot perform daily tasks like eating, toileting, dressing, and bathing by themselves?" and answered that "severely disabled people must have opportunities to govern their own lives, to make decisions by themselves, and to recognize that they are in charge of their daily activities." 27 For Okuno, the key to a meaningful life was self-determination, which was only possible when an individual was not physically or psychologically dependent on others for survival. Okuno acknowledged that it was difficult to eliminate all dependencies for both nondisabled and disabled individuals but suggested that the latter were particularly prone to dependency due to inadequate and inappropriate access to housing, medicine, education, rehabilitation, transportation, and assistive technologies, among other things. To create accessibility for disabled individuals and opportunities for them to live meaningful lives, Okuno argued that it was necessary to develop Independent Living services and an administrative vehicle for their implementation. Toward that end, she recommended that Japanese policy makers investigate precedents from the United States in Independent Living Centers (ILC). Okuno was not alone in proposing that Japanese policy makers look to American ILCs for inspiration; other activists and experts like Ōtsuki Kenichi and Takahashi Takafumi also made similar suggestions. 28 Although more than one hundred ILCs had been set up across the United States by the start of the IYDP in 1981, the majority of Japanese specialists seem to have focused their attention on the first, and arguably most radical, ILC: the Berkeley Center for Independent Living (CIL, founded 1972).

The Berkeley CIL offered a range of for-profit services such as caregiving, peer counseling, transportation, vocational training, home renovation, and technical repair. As Kodama Keiko of the Tokyo Metropolitan Geriatrics Research Institute explained in an issue of Everybody's Wishes magazine (Minna no negai) from October 1981, the CIL's services differed from contemporaneous disability services in Japan in several important ways. 29 First, the services provided by the CIL were available to anyone with a serious disability regardless of their residential status, whereas Japanese services applied only to individuals in institutions. Second, the CIL's services could be used by seriously disabled persons at any age, while services in Japan were divided among children, adults, and people over the age of sixty-five. Third, the CIL's services tried to help clients achieve multiple kinds of independence simultaneously – educational, vocational, and otherwise – whereas Japanese services often emphasized individual sectors of independence. Fourth, the CIL's services aimed at community integration, while Japanese services promoted separate accommodation. And fifth, the CIL's services were managed by disabled people themselves, unlike Japanese services. For Kodama, the CIL was an important example of what Independent Living could be like in Japan. However, the services provided by the CIL were not to be adopted wholesale: additional research was necessary to determine if the American model of Independent Living could be useful in Japan.

One important area of research for activists and welfare experts interested in setting up a system of Independent Living services in Japan was cost. In the United States, ILCs were financed by both state and federal grants authorized via a 1978 amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (hereafter, Title VII). Why did the United States Congress agree to adopt Title VII? And could Japanese policy makers be convinced to pass Independent Living legislation for similar reasons? Kojima Reiko of Japan Women's University sought answers for these questions by tracing the historical development of Title VII in a March 1981 issue of Rehabilitation Research magazine (Rihabiritēshon kenkyū). 30 According to Kojima, three major factors played a role in convincing Congress that Title VII was worthy of pursuit. The first was a series of surveys carried out by the Social Security Administration and the Institute on Urban Rehabilitation in the mid-1970s, which suggested that it was often more cost-effective to develop Independent Living services for disabled people who were ineligible for government rehabilitation programs than to support them directly via unemployment payments. The second factor cited by Kojima was evidence from the state of New Jersey's financial records, which demonstrated that the total cost of Independent Living services for severely disabled people including home remodeling, caregiving, transportation, and medical care was usually less than one quarter of the cost of institutionalization in the mid-1970s. The final factor taken up by Kojima was the rise of the Disability Rights Movement in the 1960s, which argued that Independent Living services were necessary to integrate disabled people into society. For Kojima, then, legislation like Title VII promised both economic and social rewards.

And yet, as Nakajima Kazu pointed out via her translation of Owen Dailey, Denise G. Tate, and William D. Frey's "Issues with Independent Living," Title VII was not without its problems. 31 Although the stated purpose of Title VII was "to authorize grants […] to assist states in providing comprehensive services for Independent Living," it did not define the scope of those services. 32 During the late 1970s, the ambiguity of Independent Living under Title VII inspired fierce debates among American activists and policy makers who often interpreted the concept in different ways. To understand the impact of those debates on the lives of disabled people, many Japanese activists and welfare experts traveled to the United States to investigate American ILCs during the IYDP. Some received scholarships to participate in the "Mister Donut U.S. Disability Leadership Study Abroad and Training Program" (Misutā dōnatsu shōgaisha rīdā beikoku ryūgaku kenshū haken). 33 Others gained support from groups like the International Christian Youth Exchange Federation. 34 While conducting research in the United States, Japanese activists and experts learned from leaders of the American Disability Rights Movement like Judith Heumann and Michael Winter. From their reports, it is clear that first-hand exposure to American ILCs alerted them to problems that they had not previously considered. Activist Kunii Sumie, for instance, describes how she came to appreciate the value of involving disabled people in financial decisions during her time at the CIL because they had knowledge of costly challenges that nondisabled individuals might overlook. 35 Such revelations highlighted that Japanese specialists still had much to learn about American ILCs.

As Japanese experts continued their research at American ILCs during the Spring of 1982, policy makers rushed to draft proposals for new disability legislation and deflect a growing wave of criticism tied to the IYDP. Borrowing from the developing discourse on Independent Living, the Headquarters for the Promotion of the IYDP introduced a "Long-Term Plan Regarding Policies for Disabled People" (Shōgaisha taisaku ni kansuru chōki keikaku) on March 23, which called for a restructuring of Japan's educational, employment, and rehabilitation systems as well as its built environment so that disabled people could "achieve independence to the greatest extent possible and actively participate in social activities." 36 The following week, the Council for the Welfare of Physically Disabled Persons (Shintai shōgaisha fukushi shingikai) released a "Comprehensive Strategy for Promoting the Welfare of Physically Disabled Persons in the Future" (Kongo ni okeru shintai shōgaisha fukushi o susumeru tame no sōgōteki hōsaku), which argued that the purpose of physical disability welfare in Japan should be "to reduce or eliminate physical disability to the greatest extent possible; to provide necessary accommodations for the Independent Living of physically disabled persons; to stabilize the daily lives of seriously disabled people; and to improve social conditions as necessary for the full participation of physically disabled people." 37 As hastily written proposals, it is not surprising that the "Long-Term Plan" and "Comprehensive Strategy" exhibited many of the same problems as Title VII regarding an ambiguous definition of Independent Living. Indeed, their theorization of the concept and its practical applications was so vague that it took legislators another several years of debate to settle upon any kind of legal reform.

For most of 1982, Japanese welfare experts and policy makers remained trapped in a cycle of research and debate regarding the concept of Independent Living. The gridlock finally began to break on December 3 when the UN announced the "United Nations Decade of Disabled Persons" (1983–1992). 38 Activists and experts returning from American ILCs seized the chance to invite their overseas counterparts to Japan. After reaching out to colleagues in the then titled Ministry of Health and Welfare, who themselves were interested in learning from the American leaders to settle ongoing debates about disability policy, they secured financial support to organize a series of Japan-U.S. Seminars on Independent Living for Disabled Persons (Nichibei shōgaisha jiritsu seikatsu seminā) during the Spring of 1983. Those seminars, which featured Ed Roberts, Judith Heumann, Michael Winter, and other leaders from American ILCs were set up in cities across Japan like Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. They were divided into three parts: 1) opening remarks and regional conditions of disabled people; 2) a keynote presentation from the American leaders, which examined the history of the Disability Rights Movement in the United States and concept of Independent Living; and 3) breakout sessions in which seminar attendees discussed topics like independence, urban planning, and employment for disabled people. Each seminar brought in hundreds of attendees from different sectors of society: not only activists, welfare experts, and policy makers, but also ordinary citizens who hoped to meet the leaders of America's Disability Rights Movement celebrated in the IYDP. 39

Audience reactions to the Japan–US Seminars were mixed but skeptical, as evidenced by a roundtable arranged by the seminar's organizing committee in July of 1983. There, activist Saitō Akiko explained how the American leaders' devotion to protecting disabled people's right to self-determination was so strong that it was as if they adhered to a "gospel of Independent Living" (Jiritsu seikatsu kyō), which they "aimed to spread throughout Japan like missionaries in Africa." 40 While Saitō stopped short of condemning her American colleagues at the roundtable, others did not pull their punches. Green Grass Society member Ōta Shūhei suggested that "the Americans' "faith" in independence was only possible because of their cultural background and that Japan must create its own framework of Independent Living." Ōta's comments were echoed by another Green Grass Society member, Shiraishi Kiyoharu, who argued that "although the American and Japanese Disability Movements shared a common interest in deinstitutionalization, they had unique histories and motives that made it hard to reproduce the American model of Independent Living in Japan." Nakamura Yūichi, moderator for the roundtable, said it best: "if we do everything the way that the American activists say it would be like they decided for us, and we did not make our own judgment. That is, if we just take the American idea of independence, then we would not be independent." 41

But why did Japanese disability activists think it would be so hard to replicate the American model of Independent Living in their country? What did they see as setting the two cultures apart? Among the differences discussed by the activists at the roundtable, two are particularly noteworthy: 1) training of disability activists; and 2) attitudes toward compensation for services. As Saitō Akiko argued, American activists often graduated from high school, learned that they needed expert knowledge to argue with authorities, and then pursued college degrees later in life. Such progression from practical experience to professional development was not possible in Japan, where taking time off after high school all but closed off the possibility of enrolling at university. Furthermore, the educational system in Japan at that time was highly segregated.

Indeed, as Ōta Shūhei suggested, there was a gap between disability activists and students in Japan. The former often accused students of lacking "real world" experience and failing to mobilize their education for community projects, while the latter treated activists as "misguided troublemakers." Such conflicts presented a barrier to recreating the American model of Independent Living in Japan. However, there were also other barriers like differing cultural expectations regarding renumeration for human resources, which affected the quantity and quality of services available in both countries. As activist Kubo Kōzō explained, the United States functioned on a for-profit (albeit subsidized) service model which saw disabled people as consumers, while Japan operated on a volunteer basis. Accordingly, disabled people in Japan rarely received the same kinds of services as their American counterparts and frequently faced unique environmental challenges at home, work, and school. 42 For example, disabled people in Japan often had difficulty recruiting volunteers to provide support during business hours, and as a result were unable to obtain assistance with work-related activities.

If Japan could not simply import the American model of Independent Living, then what should a Japanese model of Independent Living look like? This is the question that disability activists and welfare experts like Taniguchi Akihiro and Nakanishi Shōji attempted to address by creating institutions like the ILC Research Group (IL sentā kenkyūkai) and the Research Center on Problems Related to the Independent Living of Disabled Persons (Shōgaisha jiritsu seikatsu mondai kenkyūjo) in 1984. 43 By analyzing the activities of Japanese welfare organizations like the Kobe Lifecare Network (Kōbe raifu kea kyōkai) and augmenting them with lessons learned from American ILCs, those institutions laid the groundwork for the development of ILCs in Japan. Despite their best efforts, it was another two years before the opening of Japan's first ILC, largely due to technical and financial difficulties. During those two years, several events helped shape the form and function of the growing ILC. Perhaps the most important of those events was Nakanishi Shōji's nationwide tour of American ILCs in early January of 1986, which began at the Berkeley CIL and extended along the east coast to ILCs in places such as Boston, Virginia, and New York. Nakanishi's tour allowed him to research methods for managing ILCs in different cultural contexts. After returning to Japan and sharing his findings with his colleagues, Nakanishi established the country's first ILC, the Human Care Network (Hyūman kea kyōkai), in Hachioji on June 1, 1986. 44

Staffed primarily by disabled individuals who had studied abroad in the United States, the Human Care Network provided a range of for-profit services not unlike those offered by the CIL. For instance, it featured a caregiver dispatch program and an Independent Living training program, which aimed to equip participants with basic accounting and social skills that they might not have received at segregated schools for the disabled (Yōgo gakkō). Although the Human Care Network initially served a relatively small clientele of only fifty disabled people, it expanded at a rapid pace. By 1988, the network had more than doubled in size to serve one hundred clients, who benefitted from peer counseling programs developed on the basis of local need and international precedent. As the network grew in size, it partnered with local government agencies to subsidize its services. Before long, staff and clients began to share their experiences with friends, family, and community members, allowing for the development of additional ILCs in prefectures throughout the country. 45 In the next section, I explore how those ILCs helped Japanese activists bring together transnational coalitions of disabled and older people to promote various policy reforms in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Community Integration and the Independent Living Movement

As Asaka Junko, Okahara Masayuki, Onaka Fumiya, and Tateiwa Shinya demonstrated in Ars Vivendi: Sociology of Disabled People Who Have Left Their Homes and Institutions (1990), the creation of ILCs in Japan during the 1980s allowed some physically disabled people to live by themselves in local communities. However, the further those individuals traveled from their homes, the more barriers they encountered. 46 Consider Misawa Satoru, a wheelchair user who established the Japan Association of Quadriplegics (Keizuisonshōsha renrakukai) in 1973. Each day, Misawa traveled from his home in Shinjuku to his office in Ochanomizu using public transportation. Many train stations did not have elevators, so Misawa had to call ahead and let the attendants know that he was coming. Upon arriving at each station, Misawa was greeted by five attendants, who lifted his wheelchair up onto the train. On any given day, Misawa relied on thirty or forty attendants to reach his destination. 47 And he was not alone in that regard, as evidenced by editorials from other physically disabled people in newspapers like The Japan Times. One article describes how twenty-five-year-old wheelchair user Kadota Shunji ran into difficulties at every train station along JNR's Tokaido Line between Osaka and Tokyo during the course of a publicity stunt (called a "marathon" by the press) in August 1986. The following year, Kadota repeated his "marathon" and expanded it into a forty-day trek, which caught the attention of press outlets and politicians. 48 Perhaps the most telling account of accessibility issues during the mid-1980s was a nationwide poll conducted by the Prime Minister's office in July of 1987, which revealed that 46.6% of five thousand respondents had personal experience helping disabled people navigate train stations and other public settings. 49

As accessibility issues became increasingly apparent in Japan during the latter half of the 1980s, disability activists and welfare experts started to host global conferences on rehabilitation and assistive technologies to identify solutions. In April of 1988, Kinoshita Yukiko, chairwoman of the World Association for Promoting Independence of the Elderly, Disabled, and Women, 50 organized a two day research conference in Osaka that featured a Ray Charles concert and was attended by representatives from the United States, West Germany, Thailand, China, and the United Nations. 51 Two months later in June, the Tokyo Branch of the Asahi Shinbun Social Welfare Organization arranged another conference to showcase communication devices for people with severe physical disabilities. 52 By far the largest of the conferences held in 1988 was the 16^th World Congress of Rehabilitation International (RI), which took place at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo between September 5–9. 53 The RI conference was the first of its kind in Asia and drew in more than 2800 participants from 93 countries, including, but not limited to, disability activists, welfare experts, and policy makers. After keynote speeches from James Grant, executive director of UNICEF, and Ōe Kenzaburō (a Nobel prize winning author whose writings include candid and moving stories of living with his disabled son), participants split up to attend panel sessions on topics like design and appropriate use of technology, barrier-free architecture and transportation, legislation, and the development of national policies. For many conference attendees, the panel sessions were of lesser importance than the networking opportunities they provided, which were supplemented by receptions and social events like a film festival and sightseeing tour. Such events allowed for the formation of new solidarities and reunion of domestic and international activists and allies. Some of those individuals used the RI conference as a chance to host an impromptu demonstration.

As then-vice-chairman of Disabled Peoples' International Japan, Onoue Kōji, recalls, the demonstration began after relatively little planning as a result of casual conversations between Japanese disability activists and international allies like Judith Heumann, Kalle Konkkola, Justin Dart, and Michael Winter. On the last day of the RI conference, several wheelchair users left the venue and made their way towards Shinjuku Station, which at the time lacked an elevator. The wheelchair users intended to show how difficult it was for them to get around Tokyo before entering into negotiations with the Ministry of Transportation. By the time they reached the station, more than one hundred activists had joined their ranks. The station staff were overwhelmed and unable to assist the vast majority of protestors (at first). The protestors started to chant "Access Now!" and continued to do so while the staff scrambled to accommodate them. Eventually, after significant delays, the staff managed to help the wheelchair users board trains to their destination. Upon arriving, the protestors demanded that Ministry officials develop new accessibility policies. 54 And while the protestors' demands went unanswered, their demonstration had a major impact on Japan's physically disabled communities. For more than ten years after the initial incident, activists carried out similar protests in thirty-plus cities. Wheelchair users from across the country flocked to each city, and before long there were more than three thousand participants in the annual demonstrations. Organizations like DPI Japan supported the protestors, and over time a national network took shape.

As people advocating for physical accessibility formed alliances in the 1980s, so did ILCs. During the fall of 1989, ILC directors and staff from across the country started to coordinate with one another at a series of National Assembly Meetings on Problems Related to Independent Living (Jiritsu seikatsu mondai kenkyū zenkoku shūkai), hosted by welfare experts like Mitsugi Tadakazu of the Tokyo Disability Welfare Center and Satō Hisao of Nihonshakaijigyo University. 55 By 1990, members of ILCs in the Tokyo area like the Human Care Network, the Shinjuku Lifecare Center (Shinjuku raifu kea sentā), the Machida Human Network (Machida hyūman nettowāku), and Hands Setagaya (Hanzu Setagaya) began to work with representatives from ILCs in Shizuoka and Kyoto to create a countrywide consortium. On November 22, 1991, the night before the third annual National Assembly Meeting on Problems Related to Independent Living, ten of those ILCs came together to establish the Japan Council on Independent Living Centers (Zenkoku jiritsu seikatsu sentā kyōgikai; hereafter, JIL). 56 Borrowing from the [American] National Council on Independent Living (NCIL), JIL adopted a constitution which required that the director, secretary-general, and majority of the steering committee of all member ILCs be disabled, and that all member ILCs offer at least two of the following services to individuals with different kinds of disabilities: 1) caregiver dispatch; 2) in-home consultations; 3) peer counseling; and/or 4) Independent Living programs. 57 To become a member of JIL, applicants had to submit a petition to a selection committee composed of existing members and demonstrate their ability and willingness to comply with the constitution. As Higuchi Keiko suggests, the prerequisites for joining JIL were steep, but many ILCs still tried to do so as JIL gave leadership positions in welfare to disabled people who were often excluded. 58

Although Japan's Independent Living Movement grew out of domestic concerns regarding community integration of disabled people in the late 1980s, it also benefitted from international developments like the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. Starting in March of that year, newspapers like the Japan Times, Asahi Shinbun, and Yomiuri Shinbun began to provide coverage of the introduction of accessibility legislation by the United States Congress. Journalists emphasized how the ADA would lead to changes in transportation, communication, and business cultures and stressed that "a bill of rights for Japan's disabled is overdue as well." 59 By October, the transnational implications of the ADA became clear as Japanese entities operating in the United States like NEC, Fujitsu America, Sony, Toyota, and Japan Airlines began to change their policies to include disabled people in the workforce and target them as potential consumers. 60 For disability activists, such changes not only promised increased access to select sectors of society, but also served as a source of solidarity and pride: they were winning the fight on the global stage. Some disabled activists, such as wheelchair user Kawauchi Yoshihiko, used the passage of the ADA to encourage cross-cultural collaboration and the creation of similar accessibility policies in Japan. Kawauchi, who studied abroad at the CIL as the ADA was drafted, seized the opportunity to invite American advocates Michael Winter and Margaret Jakobson to participate in a nationwide tour of Japan in the Spring of 1991 that helped consolidate the nation's Independent Living Movement. 61

As Japan's disability activists grew closer together and lobbied for accessibility policies in the early 1990s, they allied with other groups of individuals who stood to gain from those policies: notably, older people. Japanese policy makers began to recognize the nation's aging population as a problem around the year 1960 when 5.7% of the general public was over the age of sixty-five. 62 Initial legislative efforts such as the Elderly Welfare Law (Rōjin fukushi hō) of 1963, the Zero Payment Medical System of 1973, and the Elderly Insurance Law (Rōjin hoken hō) of 1982 aimed to contain the problem of aging by building nursing homes, dispatching caregivers, and subsidizing medical services. However, Japan's population of people over sixty-five continued to climb into the mid-1980s and would not be contained. 63 In 1986, when ten percent of Japan's population was over the age of sixty-five, the Ministry of Health and Welfare set up several advisory councils to explore "sweeping changes to the entire welfare systems to adapt them to the new social environment, especially to the aging population." 64 In 1989, the Ministry released a "Ten-Year Strategy for Promoting the Welfare and Insurance of Elderly Individuals" (Kōreisha hoken fukushi suishin jukkanen senryaku), which called for the implementation of "Projects for the Creation of Easily Livable Welfare Cities." 65 Seizing the chance to advance their cause, some disability activists partnered with representatives from Japan's aging population to argue that the nation's built environment must be redesigned. 66

As pressure grew from local organizations of disabled and older people as well as global initiatives tied to the passage of the ADA, governments in places like Hyogo and Osaka began to develop regional barrier-free regulations in 1992. 67 Those regulations recommended, but did not require, facilities like hospitals and department stores to include barrier-free features such as ramps, elevators, and handrails. Regarding the optional nature of such accessibility regulations, Higuchi Seisho, director of the Hyogo Prefecture Department of Public Welfare, explained that "we can't simply order an owner to build expensive new facilities overnight." Such explanations failed to convince disability activists like Satō Satoshi of the Mainstream Association ILC, who argued that "owners won't go to the considerable expense of building ramps and so on unless forced to." 68 In addition to compliance issues, the barrier-free regulations of the early 1990s also created problems for physically disabled people due to differences in standards and implementation at the local level. Such differences were identified via surveys carried out by the Ministry of Transportation in 1992 and partially resolved by the passage of the previously mentioned Heart Building Law in June of 1994, which established national guidelines for accessible architecture. 69 Under the Heart Building Law, the installation of ramps, elevators, and other barrier-free features in numerous facilities remained optional for owners but was significantly subsidized through low-interest loans and tax exemptions.

From Regional Regulations to National Legislation

The Heart Building Law paradoxically created accessibility while highlighting barriers in the built environment for many physically disabled people in a way not unlike the development of ILCs during the mid-1980s. Installation of barrier-free features in community spaces allowed some individuals to travel away from their homes, only to encounter new obstacles at their destinations. For evidence of their journeys, one might look to a weekly column in the Japan Times by Anne Pepper called "Going Places," which ran throughout the fall of 1995 and included titles such as "Persons with Mixed Abilities on the Move" and "Airline Travel Opening Up for the Disabled." In an article entitled "Travel Options for the Differently Abled," Pepper explained to her readers:

A new world is opening up for travel-minded people who happen to be disabled. Options for disabled travelers are increasing so rapidly that it's almost impossible to keep up with them. Both in Japan and abroad, extraordinary changes have taken place during the 1990s. Spurred by the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and aided by advances in telecommunications, grassroots organizations all over the globe are working with the public and private sectors to make more places accessible to more people. 70

And yet, the "new world" of which Pepper spoke was still out of reach for many disabled people in Japan. In July of 1995, wheelchair user Kumeta Naotaka expressed his frustrations in a letter, "Where are Japan's Handicapped?", which detailed how environmental barriers and social stigma kept many individuals in their homes. 71 Kumeta was not alone in struggling with such frustrations, as made clear by editorials from other physically disabled people who also shared their concerns. 72

To facilitate the assimilation of physically disabled people into Japan's emerging landscape of accessibility during the mid-1990s, activists and welfare experts began to open new ILCs in prefectures across the country and expand ILC networks at both regional and national levels. JIL in particular experienced significant growth during the mid-1990s; by May of 1996 its membership exceeded fifty-five ILCs geographically extending from Hokkaido to Okinawa. 73 As JIL increased in size, it also broadened the scope of its activities to include research related to transportation and the promotion of barrier-free design. Some members of JIL, such as the Human Network in Kumamoto (Hyūman nettowāku Kumamoto), sent staff overseas to the United States and Europe to gather information about non-step buses and other accessible technologies, which they shared with activists and government officials via reports and colloquia. 74 Other members like the Funabashi Independent Living Center for Disabled People (Funabashi shōgaisha jiritsu seikatsu sentā) attempted to reach broader audiences by explaining the virtues of accessibility in publications like Your Neighbors in Books: The Creation of the Independent Living Movement And Us (1995). 75 Such initiatives complemented and fueled the efforts of leaders of Japan's Independent Living Movement, such as Kawauchi Yoshihiko and Satō Koichi. Kawauchi and Satō also developed publications like Barrier Full Japan: Urban Planning from the Perspective of a Disabled Expert (1996) and "Anticipating Urban Planning: The Opinions of Disabled People Are Essential" (1996) to further their campaign for the inclusion, consultation, and approval of disabled people in state-sponsored accessibility projects. 76

As demand for accessibility grew among disability activists and members of the general public, the Cabinet Office's Headquarters for the Promotion of Disability Policy (Shōgaisha taisaku suishin honbu) released a "Seven-Year Strategy for Normalization [of Disabled People]" (Nōmaraizēshon 7kanen senryaku) on December 18, 1995. The Seven-Year Strategy aimed to "use various policies and measures to positively work toward the removal of physical barriers in everyday environments such as roads, train stations, and buildings and thereby expand the activity spaces of disabled people and create a society in which their free social participation is possible." 77 More specifically, the Strategy proposed to: "1) widen 130,000 sidewalks across Japan by the start of the twenty-first century; 2) instruct the operators of new and recently renovated train stations with staircases over five meters in height and daily traffic over 5,000 people to install elevators; 3) build wheelchair-accessible bathrooms and parking spaces at all roadside stations along major highways; and 4) ensure that all newly constructed government facilities have an accessible reception desk, among other things." 78 Immediate reactions from Japan's disabled communities to the Seven-Year Strategy were mixed. Some activists argued that "regardless [as to whether it was implemented], the fact that the Strategy was created was itself significant." Others suggested that the "Strategy's aims were too narrow and unlikely to improve conditions for disabled people." 79 Such evaluations were speculative at best, as the responsibility for planning and implementing the Strategy ultimately fell on municipal authorities, who interpreted its objectives in various ways.

Differences in interpretation of the Seven-Year Strategy and other accessibility policies at the local level concerned many disability activists in Japan, some of whom organized seminars and forums to address the issue. At a roundtable event in the summer of 1997, representatives from groups such as the National Federation of Organizations for Physically Disabled Persons, the Japan Council on Disability, and the Japanese Federation of the Deaf discussed how the creation of a multi-tiered network of local, regional, and national disability associations might facilitate greater solidarity among Japan's disabled communities, allowing for collaborative efforts toward the implementation of accessibility policy. 80 Also during the summer of 1997, activists like Sawamura Seishi of the Hyogo Prefecture Comprehensive Rehabilitation Center argued that Japan's disabled communities must continue to form solidarities with politically powerful allies like organizations that support people over sixty-five if their efforts towards implementing accessibility policies were to be successful. 81

In an attempt to form solidarities dedicated to enforcing accessibilities policies, JIL hosted an International Forum on Independent Living in Tokyo between November 2–4, 1998. The forum used internet chatrooms to bring together around 1,300 activists from the United States, England, South Korea, the Philippines, and Japan to discuss issues faced in Independent Living Movements and international solidarity among ILCs throughout Asia. 82 At the forum, representatives from JIL argued that the formation of an international ILC network would allow disability activists from around the world to exchange ideas and collectively brainstorm solutions to local and global problems related to accessibility and disability policies. As English activist Nick Danagher pointed out, such a network was not without precedent; the European Network on Independent Living (ENIL) had been set up several years earlier in 1989. Although the World Independent Living Network (WIN) was not established for another two decades, early efforts towards its creation helped unite and empower activists in Japan dedicated to the promotion of accessibility policies. In May of 1999, American activist Lex Frieden followed up on JIL's forum by sending out an e-mail to attendees entitled "Global Perspectives on Independent Living for the New Millennium," which called on leaders of ILCs from around the planet to join a membership committee for the WIN. 83 As Higuchi Keiko explained in an issue of Rehabilitation magazine from the year 2000, members of the WIN development committee from countries like Germany and the United States advised Japanese activists about methods of identifying and resolving barriers to accessibility. 84

Under increasing pressure from Japan's disabled communities and aging population, the Ministry of Transportation started to investigate a mandatory accessibility law in the fall of 1999. At a press conference on January 25, 2000, Minister of Transportation Nikai Toshihiro introduced a "Barrier-Free Transportation Bill" (Kōtsū bariafurī hōan), which required operators of public transportation systems such as buses, trains, and airplanes to make their vehicles and the facilities that surrounded them user-friendly for disabled individuals and old people. 85 A complement to the Heart Building Law of 1994, the Barrier-Free Transportation Bill attempted to simplify travel between buildings, roads, and vehicles. While the bill differed from the Heart Building Law insofar as compliance was not optional, it was incentivized by a similar system of subsidies from the national government (seventy-five percent of cost). The bill was favorably received by many government agencies including the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of Construction, the Ministry of Home Affairs, and the National Police Agency, which frequently struggled with the costly fallout of problems related to inadequate accessibility: for instance, lawsuits tied to accidents and injury. 86 After some consideration, the Diet passed the Barrier-Free Transportation Law on May 10, 2000.

Although the passage of the Barrier-Free Transportation Law was a "win" for many policy makers and members of Japan's disabled communities, it was also subject to significant criticism. On May 20, ten days after the law passed the Diet, an anonymous op-ed article in the Asahi Shinbun called "Barrier-Free, But for Whom?" detailed some of the problems with its implementation. 87 Focusing on existing facilities in Kyoto and Osaka, the op-ed identified how wheelchair-accessible entrances at parks and train stations were often narrowed or closed off entirely to prevent bicyclists from illegally parking and how, as a result, only particular models of wheelchairs could enter the so-called "accessible" entrances. The article also gave other examples of inaccessible accessibility, including payphones that were out of reach for wheelchair users and elevators that were too small to accommodate even the smallest of chairs.

As activists for accessibility such as Yoshiura Miwa pointed out in follow-up articles, such examples were not uncommon, and even when barrier-free features were properly situated they often resulted in social segregation by singling out physically disabled individuals for "special treatment." 88 In The Japan Times, Misawa Satoru explained that "many elevators have been installed at the farthest corners of buildings and are usually locked shut. Users must ask facility maintenance personnel to unlock them each time." 89 To resolve such issues and effectively implement the new law, activists for accessibility like Onoue Kōji insisted that "it is important that designers consider the users' perspective from the earliest stages of planning. After all, it is incredibly difficult to rebuild something after it has been completed. Now that we are in a good position to develop barrier-free features, we must not do so in form alone." 90

Onoue's use of the word "user" as opposed to "disabled person" in his plea for inclusive design is worthy of note because it highlighted how developments in accessibility affected everyone. Indeed, his words represented the culmination of decades of advocacy for accessibility in Japan, through which disability activists attempted to achieve community integration by forming strategic alliances with powerful organizations of older people as well as individuals from overseas. The word "user" also reflected a growing global discourse on Universal Design at the turn of the twenty-first century, which caught the attention of Japanese scholars, politicians, and press outlets. 91 Often associated with American architect and disability advocate Ronald Mace, Universal Design is the "concept of designing all products and the built environment to be aesthetic and usable to the greatest extent possible by everyone, regardless of their age, ability, or status in life." 92 For Japan in the year 2000, Universal Design appeared to be a valuable solution considering that 17.4% of the population was over the age of sixty-five and there was a rise in protests for accessibility from various sectors of society. 93

In 2002, the Cabinet Office officially incorporated the concept of Universal Design into its "Basic Plan for Disabled People" (Shōgaisha kihon keikaku). Two years later, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport established a Universal Design Policy Promotion Headquarters under its jurisdiction to oversee the implementation of principles of Universal Design throughout Japan. 94 By the time that the Barrier-Free Transportation Law was up for its five-year evaluation in 2005, the number of accessible train stations in Japan had increased from 1381 to 2000, and the number of non-step buses had skyrocketed from 1,289 to 5,432. 95 And in December of 2006, the National Diet passed the New Barrier-Free Law (Bariafurī shinpō), which formally merged the Barrier-Free Transportation Law with the Heart Building Law and expanded the scope of state-subsidized accessibility projects to include numerous public parks, roadways, and other kinds of facilities. 96 It seemed as if the advocacy of Onoue and other activists for accessibility was finally paying off. However, the broad promotion of Universal Design policies did not always produce desired results.

As Kawauchi Yoshiko has argued in Barrier-Free Without Dignity (2021), the promotion of Universal Design policies was not enough to improve accessibility for many disabled people. 97 Economic constraints tied to the renovation of existing facilities led the owners of buildings and transit hubs to install barrier-free features in remote areas to cut costs and maintain flows of traffic. Such displacement had a significant impact on the usability of newly installed barrier-free features, as did inadequate training of staff tasked with helping physically disabled individuals operate them. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to usability of universally-designed facilities for disabled people was a lack of awareness and consensus about the nature of accessibility among members of the public. Different sets of stakeholders sought to use the newly constructed facilities for their own purposes: not just physically disabled individuals, but also old people, parents with strollers, and other groups. Due to issues of scarcity, such populations were forced to compete for resources, sparking debates between activists about the politics of Universal Design and best practices for its implementation. 98 Those debates helped define accessibility for physically disabled people in Japan during the 2000s, enabling some individuals to pursue Independent Living while restricting opportunities for others.

Concluding Remarks

When Carolyn S. Stevens conducted fieldwork in Tokyo with her disabled daughter between 2000 and 2006, she concluded that Japan's urban accessibility was shaped by overcrowding and user diversity. Stevens was correct: competition between multiple users had influenced Japan's built environment. But why did that competition exist in the first place? Who helped establish accessibility standards and practices in Japan? As I have demonstrated, Japan's landscape of accessibility was a product of decades of activism by transnational disabled communities as well as domestic and international pressures. The installation of barrier-free features in the built environment was directly informed by the extralegal efforts of disability activists, welfare experts, and allies. They capitalized on local and global events such as the rise of ILCs, the passage of the ADA, and the spectacle of Japan's rapidly aging society to form coalitions and pressure policy makers into drafting legislation that mandated accessibility like the Barrier-Free Transportation Law of 2000. The activists' strategy of building solidarity and promoting accessibility for everyone advanced an agenda of Universal Design, which in theory should have helped physically disabled people pursue Independent Living. In practice, however, the implementation of Universal Design was stifled by economic constraints, and physically disabled individuals often had to compete for accessibility with other kinds of users.

There is much that scholars of Disability Studies and related academic disciplines can learn from the twenty-five-year trajectory of activism for accessibility in Japan that I have presented. For instance, the trajectory shows how activism for accessibility must be understood as a transnational project in which global activists exchange ideas and evaluate them in light of local circumstances to resolve culturally relevant crises. It also reveals how politically advantageous alliances between organizations of marginalized individuals in the present can negatively impact others in the future. Such insights demand that we build upon descriptive histories of disability by scholars like Joseph Shapiro, Doris Fleischer, Freida Zames, and Susan Schweik, which examine the domestic legacies of accessibility activism in the United States for some disabled people but often overlook their international implications and consequences for other diverse demographics. 99 They also invite us to investigate several questions as avenues for future exploration and research. First, how have the efforts of activists for accessibility in the United States and Japan reciprocally shaped and been shaped by notions of accessibility from other countries at various points in time? Second, if some countries have been more or less involved in transnational dialogues about accessibility, why is that? What are the effects of their involvement for different communities of individuals? Finally, what can we do to anticipate and mitigate the unintended harms of accessibility activism?

As a scholar of Japan, I am particularly invested in asking and answering these questions. Japan has the world's fastest aging population, and accessibility will only become a more pressing concern in years to come. If we do not thoroughly investigate the politics of accessibility in Japan, including their local and global origins, we risk marginalizing many older and disabled individuals. Indeed, it is not only old and disabled individuals in Japan who would be affected by our inaction. The transnational project of accessibility activism means that Japanese innovations in inclusivity might be exported to other cultural contexts, shaping frameworks of accessibility across the planet. To ensure that those frameworks are desired by and useful for diverse people, we must study Japan.